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Jane Ormond

Australia

Bouncing around various countries as a child gave Jane a love of travel and a need for coffee. She indulges both of these in her writing for various travel sites and publications as well as restaurant and coffee guides in her hometown of Melbourne, Australia.

Hong Kong – that compact, coordinated, chaotic and somehow still calming corner of China. Before the humidity starts to really set in, why not hightail it over to Hong Kong for some truly unique events and experiences – some of which are just around the corner.

Vast, lush Queensland took quite a hit in January of 2011 when Cyclone Yasi descended and floods turns streets into rivers. But they don’t call Queensland ‘the Sunshine State’ for nothing. Weather patterns are back to normal and the clean-up has been well underway for a few months now – it only took the Queensland Art Gallery and the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane’s fabulous Cultural Centre Precinct a matter of a few weeks before it reopened. The Great Barrier Reef only sustained a small amount of surface damage to one limited area, and considering its 2300km long, that’s still a whole lot of seven-wonders-of the-world to soak up!

What to do in Hong Kong if you don’t like shopping… Bit of a crazy scenario, right? I mean, who doesn’t go to Hong Kong for the shopping? And it’s true, if you love hitting the stores and getting enough retail therapy to keep you blissed out for decades, Hong Kong is where it’s at. Gleaming malls host spectacular fashion emporiums – Chanel, Dior, Lanvin, Westwood – you name it, you can get it, and at a reasonable price too.

Chapel Street is the Melbourne street that shopping-obsessed Sydneysiders flock to on weekends – and with good reason. But even if shopping's not entirely your thing, Chapel St is perfect for an idle afternoon of wandering.

Melbourne is essentially a city of villages. Distinct inner city suburbs spoke out from the orderly CBD, each with its own flavour and drawcards. One of the most famous and flocked to of these villages is St Kilda.

If you’ve ever been to New Zealand, you’ll know how clean and green it is. That crisp air, those friendly people – it’s a stunning, striking place. Unfortunately Christchurch in New Zealand suffered a terrible earthquake earlier in 2011, and while much of the Christchurch CBD (and its hotels) is still disrupted, that’s no reason to not go there as there are many day trips to take that spoke out from the CBD and out into the wider Canterbury region.

Let’s face it, Europe is quite the flight from Australia. Luckily, Melbourne is quite the multicultural hotspot, able to stem homesickness or travel bugs with its mini versions of some of the world’s greatest cultures.
Take Spain for example. Sure you won’t see Melburnians hurling tomatoes or fleeing bulls stampeding down city streets, but if you’ve got a hunger for something Spanish, Melbourne can feed it.

June may be summer in Tokyo but it’s also the rainy season. So what better excuse to escape the rain than by diving into Tokyo’s Great Japan Beer Festival? Even though many of us might automatically think of sake as the drink of choice in Japan, beer is in fact the most popular. The Great Japan Beer Festival takes place in early June at the Ebisu Garden Hall in Tokyo. It’s one of the two biggest beer festivals in Japan and is wildly popular with beer aficionados (so consider buying your entrance ticket in advance – you’ll save time and money) who flock in their thousands.